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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22759975">A phantom pain</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiddleRedCoats/pseuds/RiddleRedCoats'>RiddleRedCoats</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Bellamort One-Shots [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bellatrix is dead, F/M, The Black Sisters love each other very much, Voldemort has feelings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 11:41:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,214</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22759975</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiddleRedCoats/pseuds/RiddleRedCoats</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Voldemort returns to his body after 13 years and finds out that Bellatrix died in Azkaban.<br/>Yup, that's pretty much it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bellatrix Black Lestrange/Voldemort</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Bellamort One-Shots [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1270415</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A phantom pain</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBlueDahlia99/gifts">TheBlueDahlia99</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So, I didn’t write the scene where he finds her, because it always came out too melodramatic, but I did write the scene where he finds out. So here, have Voldemort full of feels. (Side appearances of Black Sisters, except Bella cause she’s dead. And a special guest.)</p><p>Hope you like it, knightessofwalpurgis!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The darkened room that had served as his hideout for the past… Only the Gods know how many months… was dirty, filthy and in utter disarray. The blinds which hadn’t been opened since he had moved in, the desk had long since run out of space for his papers, the sofa had the light imprint of his body – less for his actual weight but more for his continued use – for when he slept, and  the pile of clothes that were intermittently changed were all lying on the floor resting alongside the books and papers that had made the bulk of his research months ago; the only part of the room that wasn’t grimy was the sheets. He hadn’t used the bed for anything but put more papers and books when the desk ran out of space.</p><p> </p><p>With a hushed rage the book in his hands takes a perfect arch of a flight as another dead end is all he has to content himself with.</p><p> </p><p>It is the same as every other day.</p><p> </p><p>His days are spent in research. Books upon books, papers upon papers, rumour upon rumour are checked, verified, rejected and annotated, and the cycle repeats. So engrossed in study that rare are the days he remembers to eat, much less sleep.</p><p> </p><p>The cause of his research doesn’t help matters. Overcoming death? That is easy a task compared to <em>overturning </em>death. Once a deed is done, undoing it is a arduous task of near heroic exercise. And he had searched for such deeds, of people who had overturned death, no matter how fanciful the tale was.</p><p> </p><p>He still remembers the day when the news of <em>her </em>death – he could never truly say her name anymore, thinking it even could be likened to craving his fangs on the neck of a unicorn; life-giving, yes, if only because the pain and revolt made it known that no hell could compare to the agony of living moment – had capitulated this whole, dull exercise his life seemed to revolve around.</p><p> </p><p>He remembers the confusion of not seeing <em>her </em>with the rescued soldiers, the surprise in his face must have been evident but it hadn’t been Lucius – cowardly as he may be, he fancied himself useful – who had given him the news.</p><p> </p><p><em>Her </em>sister, tears in cloudy blue eyes had gently – why, why, why was she being so with him? – led him from the hall, and had apparated with him to a familiar site – he remembers <em>her,</em> quietly sobbing in her sister’s arms, as her father’s coffin went to ground, the image of her set against the background he found himself seeing again – and he must have stumbled because <em>her </em>sister, now alone with tears unabashedly running down her eyes, had grabbed his arm to steady him and lead him to a grandiose tomb – how, how how had this happened?</p><p> </p><p>He had knelt before it and heard his companion gasp at the venerable act but paid it no mind, reading, instead, the inscription on the black marbled stone lined with golden veins. He traced the carved epitaph and date with a long, white finger. Arrived too late by a year. A mere year.</p><p>
  
</p><p>“She got the kiss,” broken-sobbed sister interrupted quietly, “Some guard tried to grab her, she fought back and killed him. There was nothing I could-…” he was sure that sobs racked her body, if the sound was anything to go by.</p><p> </p><p>He remembers saying nothing, remembers watching it with muted eyes. He thought himself being able to rarely truly feel anymore but there was a dull pang in his chest that penetrated through his often-desensitized senses that seemed to reverberate through every part of his being.</p><p> </p><p>He also remembers kneeling there for a long time; even after <em>her </em>sister was long gone, he remembers staying. He remembers coming back to Malfoy Manor and being surprised to see the pitying looks, the knowing looks, the sympathetic looks. As if everyone had known how he would react except himself.</p><p> </p><p>If there had been rumours before, after <em>that</em> – after spending what turned out to be three days at her tomb stone –,  it became inevitable to avoid them.</p><p> </p><p>He had always known the rumours about them, would have to be blind, deaf and a squib to have never heard them, but that was all that there was to them… Rumours. A fact that would surprise enough people to make it a noteworthy gossip.</p><p> </p><p>Of course that every rumour has a sliver of truth and this time was no different, while there was no interaction between them that hadn’t passed in front of the eyes of someone – <em>anyone would do, </em>at some point they had wordlessly decided – else, a precaution for both of them and a way to keep up the appearances… While that <em>was</em> an ignorable truth, it didn’t mean that sentiment wasn’t there. That need, lust, care, devotion, admiration, respect, loyalty, friendship, <em>love… </em>didn’t penetrate the air between them, infusing tension into every single of their interactions even with a bloody chaperone.</p><p> </p><p>After learning of her death, first the pain had been dull, rarely striking at him even as he prepared his comeback. Then, as if his wall slowly crumbled, the pain began to harass at the back of his mind interrupting meetings, strategies, and sleep. The image of her, a thought that she might have, her voice…Oh, those were always breathtakingly painful when her voice echoed in his cold, unfeeling mind, and yet, it was only in those moments that he stopped feeling half-way real, when he heard her voice.</p><p> </p><p>And then, as was his wont, as was his nature and character… He became fixated with the idea of her, possessed by the idea of truly listening to her voice one last time.</p><p> </p><p>He knows, bitterly and with unbridled – yet still muted, as everything is these days – anger, that had they acted, had they indulged, and succumbed and allowed themselves to partake in adulterous and desired act – the consequences be thrice damned to hell – had they allowed themselves that reprieve from their stations, then he would not be so obsessed, so infatuated, so <em>crippled</em> by his need to listen to her again. To have her say the words they both knew to be true but had never put to lips, to hear her berate him, even, for having neglected his – their – cause in search of her, anything to hear her voice, her sentiment, her fondness and love for him in her quiet, even gentle if she so wished to make it so, voice.</p><p> </p><p>And he had.</p><p> </p><p>Neglected his cause, he meant. Almost bitter, but not entirely. A part of him glad to be rid of the of the conflict he had initiated when he had been too young to truly understand how tiring it was to be at the forefront of war faction, how war could tear at his brain until nothing remained but the ignorable need to survive. A war that he had never truly believed, not when the traditions the war had meant to preserve only resulted in leaving him and <em>her </em>utterly devastated and alone with their desires.   </p><p> </p><p>As his search for her became more and more time consuming, the war that had weighted on him for more years than he was comfortable with admitting, fell to the back burner to be abandoned to whoever wanted to take the mantle from him. Although, unsurprisingly, no one did. War, prison, and loss had ravaged the whole country, no one wanted to be at the vanguard of a war anymore.</p><p> </p><p>And so, along the way, the many meetings became few and then scarce, and finally, no one dared to enter his room; all having deserted him, most having left the continent all together to avoid capture, he knew from meetings with Lucius who had eventually also stopped coming into the wing of his own manor he had reserved for him. And he had, eventually, lost track of time, unknowing how many months – years, perhaps – had passed since his focus shifted from blood conflict to bloody sentimental search.</p><p> </p><p>And so the days repeated, books upon books, papers upon papers, rumour upon rumour. Again and again. Round and round it goes.</p><p> </p><p>Cycle as his life might have become, there are days, though, that his brain – bursting with information, brimming with immoral and immortal reasonings – begs for different setting, of which, in his current near-completely-shut-in state left the gardens where the sun’s bright light affected his eyes, or the solarium which presents the same problem only with no solace to the heat from the outside wind, or finally, the library with dark, dusty tomes that would help in his research.</p><p> </p><p>To act as if there is a decision to be made is always a moot point, really for that is where he always finds himself, at any rate, the library of the house of one of his – former – subordinates. Always with a hungry eye on the prize, the Malfoy ancestry would not allow Lucius to squander the possibility that he might return to his former glory. To say to the man that he might be hoping for an impossible result was hopeless and counterproductive, he is not that far gone to unrecognize the advantage of the luxury he finds himself at.  </p><p> </p><p>This day is no different as he leaves his bedroom and walks with scarcely used legs the few paces to the library, immersing himself in the smells of old books. Combing through severely lacking old spines of tomes older than the very building, and passing a section he rarely seeks, and something calls his eyes to it.</p><p> </p><p>Out the corner of his eye, he sees it. A faded picture hidden between rarely called upon tomes of three young women, heads thrown back in laughter in the setting of a seedy bar that they must have ran off to in spite of cherished parents advise.  </p><p> </p><p>Three Sisters Black.</p><p> </p><p>The oldest, strong, powerful, and warrior-like, none like her was he ever likely to find; having drawn her last breath, she was the one he was searching for despite wasteful death. The middle-one, princess, boulder-bound, saved from terrible fate by a boy’s clumsy hands; the one he always forgot no matter how much pain she wrought. The youngest, delicate, golden, prideful, family’s path did she follow; the one who shared his need and urged him to succeed.</p><p> </p><p>The Three Black Sisters.</p><p> </p><p>Sisters three.</p><p> </p><p>Lightning, painful and mottled, courses through veins as idea materialized in brain.</p><p> </p><p>Sisters <em>three</em>.</p><p> </p><p><em>Brothers </em>three.</p><p> </p><p>The Deathly Hallows. Master of Death, the one to hold them all would be. Still, for a quick talk, the stone would do, all he had to do was find the one who had it. Plan cocked and ready to execute, he makes to leave the room when sound strikes him still, he had thought himself alone in the library.</p><p> </p><p>Fate is a curious thing, or perhaps, it merely enjoys making a mockery of him, for the sound he hears is intricately linked to the wonderous epiphany reached.</p><p> </p><p>He hears a snort, the rotten sister, he knows the voice well, so like <em>hers</em>, “Who would have thought… When we heard <em>he</em> came back everyone sprint to a frenzy, after ousting Fudge, naturally. But then… Nothing. For three-years. We thought that the Potter boy had lost his mind.”</p><p> </p><p>“If only.” The golden sister, now. He knows that voice too, much less like <em>hers</em> but still known to him. Though, barely, anymore.</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah, I know. And then Draco, last year, spills the beans and says <em>he</em>’s here. We call Lucius in to the Ministry and then he says the words…” a laugh now, loud and like <em>hers </em>too, but less vivid, less enticing, just <em>less</em>, “’He’s looking for a way to bring Bellatrix back’, all snide and everything as Lucius inclines to do. We thought to bring <em>him</em> in but decided against it when we realized that he was better off in his own desperate search of her. Gods, the shock that rippled through the Wizardry World.”</p><p> </p><p>“I know. I have the newspaper articles,” the other argues coldly, out of patience, now too sounding like <em>her </em>a bit, “Why are you telling me this? Did you come to mock? Did you come to tarnish the memory of our sister just that little bit more?”</p><p> </p><p>“Did you know,” the traitor continues as if she hadn’t been interrupted, but indeed ridiculing, “The Ministry almost wanted to give our sister a medal. For ending a war before it started. Only our illustrious sister could do that, long after she’s dead, too. And all that with her cunt. Incredible, really.”</p><p> </p><p>Before he can move, before he can even decipher the words, his addled brain too used to written texts and less to human interaction, before he can react to the obscene, immoral, lewd insult, before he can do any of <em>that</em>… It is the youngest’s voice, harsh and cold and insulted beyond measure, that rises in the room. </p><p> </p><p>“How dare you?!”</p><p> </p><p>“How dare I, what?” Bound Princess Andromeda may be, but of wit sharp as the family and stone she was born and bound to, “We all know that this desperation could only come from one place. That this particular devotion that not even her husband shared is from some rotten place inside of him. That he wants her back, is indication enough that they-…”</p><p> </p><p>Before another foul insult can make its way past Black raised mouth, he speaks, finally loud enough to attract their attention.</p><p> </p><p>“We didn’t.”</p><p> </p><p>Tea-filled porcelain shatters on the floor, the sisters startled by his utterance. Startled gasps fill the silence of his wake and arrogance feigned he walks to them with the intent of walking by altogether. </p><p> </p><p>But when the Princess-named sister looks at him, the urge to advert his eyes almost overwhelms him; family-bound she and her sister were, but it is unfairly unkind for her to look so much like the one he seeks, and although the colouring is all wrong – all far too dull, not vibrant black hair or grey iris – it hurt to look at the look-a-like. No, the golden-haired, blue-eyed sister was much safer bet.</p><p> </p><p>“Come, sit.”</p><p> </p><p>Gentleness has taken place to fear in the youngest of the sisters, either by shared misery or by nature of motherhood. He should care about lost station, but she does not pass any imaginary boundaries that may have existed what feels like centuries ago. He obeys, more out of need to organize his thoughts on his new idea than real obedience or want of small talk.</p><p> </p><p>“So you never…”</p><p> </p><p>Whatever plans he had to remain quiet are quickly broken by noisy-look-a-like-sister looking at him, suspiciously. As if he would lie. He might, to be frank, but not about this – not about <em>her </em>– and certainly not now, now that <em>she</em>’s… not here.</p><p> </p><p>“No.” He admits, unsure as to why he is compelled to do so, “We never. She was married, and even if it did not matter, which it <em>did</em>… She didn’t-…” the phrase hangs in the air, and he cannot unstick the words from his throat.</p><p> </p><p>“She didn’t…?” Prods the look-a-like, glutton for information. Either as gossip or as genuine care for her estranged sister, he does not know.</p><p> </p><p>“The risk for her was high, no denying that. But the risk for me,” He says still unbelieving that it is true, that the pain they bore was born out of mutual feeling and not one-sided apathy, “the risk was too high. It would make me seem even more hypocritical than my lineage already did. She did not want to risk it.”</p><p> </p><p>“Are you even sure she wanted..?” Meddling in the wound she had opened up. The cruelty of her sister would make Bell- <em>her </em>– proud. </p><p> </p><p>“Yes!” Word he breathes forcefully. Too forcefully, perhaps, as the bookcase behind him trembles in tune with his magic, “She did want.”</p><p> </p><p>“How do you know?” Prodding further, Black brutality rearing its head again.</p><p> </p><p>“He knows.” Golden sister answers the question, iron in her voice, shield against brittle princess, unbending with the same certainty he feels, “He knows because she couldn’t hide it. Because looking at her as she looked at him was a masterclass in pain, deep and true and undoubtful. She loved him madly. Fervently. Gloriously … As was our sister’s wont.”</p><p> </p><p>“What a load of bullshit.” Mumbles in response of poetry invoked, but suspicious mist in eyes couldn’t hide the truth of affected sentiment, “Bellatrix would let everyone, and everything, go to hell if it suited her. She doesn’t… I mean, she never…”</p><p> </p><p>“She loves you.” Again comforting for some alien reason that he cannot bear – and does not want – to identify, “I saw her mind, over and over again. Letting you leave was unthinkable, unbearable, even. Not going after you… That was a kindness she seldom affords anyone.”</p><p> </p><p>The blood-bound duo quietens, and he with nothing more to say retreats to his space, his sanctuary, leaving behind two opposing sisters instead of the three harmonious ones it should have always been.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>It takes him longer still to come by the stone he so feverishly searched. This time, he counted. Almost five-years to the day since he found her, dead and broken as she should never have been. He takes a moment, for he must, his heart beating far too fast to be trustworthy at the sight of her.</p><p> </p><p>Taking a deep breath, a complicated sigh of both anticipation and nerve, he grasps the cold black stone in his elegant, white hand. He closes his eyes, thinks of her, and for a second does not understand how some people’s image of their loved ones blur with time when he can see her so clearly, so quickly and so vividly that it must mean love; her black hair shiny and wavy swaying mid-battle, eyes grey and wide lusting after the next breathless moment, nose high strung and proud, neck long and elegant, and lips red and luscious and, deplorably, unkissed by him.</p><p> </p><p>He sees her in his mind’s eyes. And calls to her. And he opens his eyes, heart thundering at the image he expects. Yet when eyelids lift and eyes acclimate to light, the image he expects is not the one he encounters.</p><p> </p><p>Black hair does appear before him, not shiny or wavy but messy and dishevelled of bed-ridden quality as if of never brushed it spoke of. Eyes, not of a faded grey he had come to know better than his own, but of matte black that made a simile of his before blood-red iris replaced it. Nose brash and crooked spoke of no noble quality although known was that most pure ancestry ran in this person’s veins; same could be said of short and stocky neck burdened by inbreed defect. And lips, not red or luscious, but that had never shown him affection either.  </p><p> </p><p>A most undesirable picture does the woman in front of him paint.</p><p> </p><p>He speaks first. Not because he must, the ritual says nothing of the sort, but because the other seems to be enthralled by his every image, as if he was the dead one and not she. When he speaks, he does not address her, does not care to address her. He only wishes for the one he called.</p><p> </p><p>“You are not who I called.”</p><p> </p><p>“Hello, Tom.”</p><p> </p><p>The voice he had imagined a thousand times before as being gentle and quiet, sounded nothing like his imaginary folly. Coarse and broken, far too high and enough to grate on his brain. Another thing about this absent figure of his life that fell well below his standards.</p><p> </p><p>“Hello, Mother.”</p><p> </p><p>Title addressed not out of respect or affection, but of needling quality; poking at the wound that he could see in her black eyes.</p><p> </p><p>“My boy-…”</p><p> </p><p>Her sentiment does not interest him. She, does not interest him. The one he wants, the one he was certain he had been about to meet. That is what – <em>who</em> – interest him. So, manners out of the window and mother or not, he asks the question he hungers the answer for, all others having been lost in the wake of his search for <em>her</em>.</p><p> </p><p>“Where is she?” He says, interrupting wounded party, “Where is…Bellatrix?” If his mouth stammers out her name, the name he hadn’t spoken or heard in years it was merely out of rare habit, a lie he would tell anyone but himself. He knows now that the pain he feels precludes strong sentiment – love, even – no matter how wrapped it may be.</p><p> </p><p>The figure he had dreamed of in his childhood resigns to his demands, hurt and longing in her gaze. But mother, as loosely as the term can be applied, hungers to rid child of questions she knows the answers to. He listens, intently, son to her for the first time since their world began.</p><p> </p><p>“The soul sucking monsters, they took her soul. There is nothing to call over.” Gently, she illuminates the dark implications of her presence, “Tom, she is gone. There is no way for you to talk to her.”</p><p> </p><p>No.</p><p> </p><p>He refuses to believe so.</p><p> </p><p>When he was fifteen, he refused to let time expire on him. He found a way around death itself and had done it seven times. He lifted himself out of hellish existence, out of poverty, out of banality. He fought and struggled until his very name became so synonymous with power that eventually fear demanded no one utter it. This stumbling block of meandering quality was the challenge he had been working towards his whole life, he forged himself anew for this. He died and came back. He fought the inevitable and won.</p><p> </p><p>He would do so again.</p><p> </p><p>“Then the beast, who sucked the soul of her… It should have the answers.”</p><p> </p><p>“Child,” Mother, as mothers’ wont, ignores child’s angry scowl at never used term, “do not travel this road. You cannot find what you seek, you are bound to be disappointed.”</p><p> </p><p>“I must try,” Explanations fall on flat ears he knows, “She must be there, in the stomach of a monster who sucked the life of her, who used and abused of her, who does not know the precious cargo it carries. I must relieve her of it. I must end it. She would have done so for me.”</p><p> </p><p>Silence is the answer to his harangue, but not solitude, no. The image of his mother – hideous, broken, black of hair – was still there, looking at him longingly. Expectantly. He ignored her. What he was about to do would require time, it was fresh and impossible – things he excelled at – and he needed to start now.  He turns to black board of his room, his ever-faithful companion until he can succeed in finding <em>her</em>,</p><p> </p><p>But when ignored form coughs loudly, he turns from black board to look at her.</p><p> </p><p>“You have nothing more to say to me?” Asks the ghostly figure of his mother, deathly pale and transparent in her image and need.</p><p> </p><p>“No. I have everything I’ve ever needed from you.” He says realizing it to be so, the phantom pain of his mother’s abandonment had simply dissipated somewhere along the way as another took its place, “You can go. I have work to do.”</p><p> </p><p>“She does not deserve you.”</p><p> </p><p>“You don’t know that. Don’t know her.” Quiet rage fills the soul, of which he has an indisputable lack, yet not enough to refrain from his need, “And even if it was true, I merely wish to speak.”</p><p> </p><p>“Have you not spoken all you need? Is there no other act that you should perform?”</p><p> </p><p>Motherly ghost or not, she should not know of the details of his need of <em>her</em>.</p><p> </p><p>“Begone.” He says but <em>this</em> close to throwing the stone away from his grasp, “I have work to be done.”</p><p> </p><p>“And after you’ve <em>spoken</em>,” sly nature runs in blood, and he chafes at the purest part of him chastising him now, “What will you do?”</p><p> </p><p>Quiet permeates the sounds in the room, making the desolate space even more so. The stillness accentuates the icy walls and chaos ridden room, muted sounds barely seep in from the rich fauna and warm sun outside, silence dominates the room and the space in his head. </p><p> </p><p>He knows not. He knows not what he would do.</p><p> </p><p>“I do not know.” He admits, unabashed, confusion settling in his brow, “But it matters not. I have a need, and a way to seize it. After…” he frowns, “When it comes, I will know.”</p><p> </p><p>“Very well, boy.” Motherly figure starts to fade, as she always has, but not before parting goodbyes, “Immortal you may be, but the task you have you will not succeed. So, be shrewd, or you will never be free. And there will be no one at the end for you to greet.”</p><p> </p><p>Prophecy bound he seems to be, as his mother spun words with the knowledge from the beyond. He cares not, as he should not have before with the boy with thrice-defying parents that he could trace back as having put to motion this desolate exercise. There is work to be done and pain to correct, a lifetime meant nothing to him, not when he has tons to spare.   </p>
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